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the the is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Colorado, USA
Posts: 8,279
Certainly the theme of the article is beyond dispute:

"Too many people rely on their home as their primary savings strategy."

If you are relying on your home as your PRIMARY savings strategy, you're nuts.

But I think a lot of people are doing that. Esp. in the last few years. Remember the LA Times article from a couple of years ago, where something big % of people said they believed their house would continue to appreciate 20% per year indefinately?

If you believed that to be true, you would feel no need to save anything.

Which is exactly what I think a lot of people have felt. And which is why I think this housing collapse is going to tank the economy.

As Greenspan noted today, 2/3 of GDP is consumer spending. And consumer spending the past 4 years has been red hot, driven mainly by the feelings of "wealth" most people have, because of their bubblicious paper equity in their house.

That feeling is quickly disappearing, even among the most dense. Not only is the disappearing feeling going to cut consumer spending, but the Home Equity ATM is most definately closed, so even if people wanted to keep spending, many can't anymore.

Less spending/less GDP/less corporate profits/less employment . . . can you say long recession?
Old 03-15-2007, 06:17 PM
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